cruel--for at least he 'sticks around.'" He has not the roving
disposition, but is apt to be intemperate and industrially inefficient
as compared with the deserter. Often the married vagabond, as he has
been called, is a "home-loving man who simply shirks responsibility and
dislikes effort." He may "sometimes feel parental responsibility even
though he does not support," and he is likely to have less physical and
mental stamina than the deserter. That phrase in which the psychiatrists
take refuge, "constitutional inferiority," is more likely to describe
the stay-at-home than the wanderer. However, one social worker
(non-medical) says "a mental twist more often enters into the problem of
the deserter than into that of the non-supporter, from my experience."

The head of a large probation department writes: "Many of the deserters
with whom we have dealt were non-supporters before coming to our
attention. Among the men convicted of abandonment, however, is a group
which is above the average in intelligence--skilled workers or men in
professional occupations."

If this concurrence of observation is sound the reason for the social
worker's preference for the deserter as material with which to work is
not far to seek. With the deserter as described, the problem is chiefly
to alter his point of view; with the non-supporter it is, in addition,
to stiffen his will and to increase his capacity--a far more complicated
task.

"The deserter is likely to have less justification than the
non-supporter," says an observer of long experience. Studies which have
been made of the relative capacity of the wives of deserters and of
non-supporters seem to agree that the latter have the weaker characters
and are less competent and successful workers. A comment made upon one